


And the Definition of Home

by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Couch Cuddles, Ezekiel Jones needs a hug, Feels, Mermaids, Multi, Near Drowning, OT3, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 17:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12017736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf/pseuds/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf
Summary: Safe as houses. Ezekiel hated that term. It was stupid, because not a lot of houses were actually safe. But nobody said that a home necessarily had to be a house, did they?





	And the Definition of Home

Safe as houses.

Ezekiel hated that term. It was stupid, because not a lot of houses were actually safe. Oh, sure, there were plenty of sappy, white-picket-fence-with-a-golden-buggering-retriever homes with the nice car and the June Cleaver mum and the appropriated 2.5 kids, but in reality, most houses were slammed doors and cold glares and barbed words hurled like knives. Homes were broken into, burned down, demolished, wrecked. Safe as houses, his arse.

That was why he never stayed in one place very long. He was a world-class thief, key word being 'world.' That meant he wasn't about to be setting up a mortgage anytime soon. Nope, he flitted from place to place as it pleased him, sometimes renting, sometimes just having himself a nice staycation in some rich idiot's house that was currently off skiing in Gestaad with his surgically-enhanced trophy wife.

Being a Librarian kinda put a dint in that particular habit. The Back Door meant that he could quite literally go halfway across the world in one step, but he still had to live in Portland, somewhere close by, in case the Door ever broke, or if it was being used by somebody else. He didn't much like that. Staying in one place too long after years of drifting made him feel...itchy. So he compromised. He got himself several flats throughout the city—all paid for with transferred funds from disgustingly rich people that wouldn't miss the rent—and rotated through them as needed. And even though Baird was like to bend that damned  _look_ on him, he was  _not_ about to just 'pick one' like she said. Why spend his money when he could spend someone else's? Not like they weren't already raking it in.

And, inescapably, Stone and Cassandra found out. He got his share of confused looks from the two of them, but eventually those stopped, too. All Librarians were entitled to their own personal quirks, apparently, like Cassandra considering physics to be an interesting hobby and not a career choice, or like Stone getting ridiculously excited over some poncy bit of art, because chunks of 2,000-year-old clay was not  _that_ amazing, mate, seriously, or like Flynn's...everything, really.

One memorable night, he managed to convince both Stone and Cassandra to join him for a celebratory round at the nearest pub. They'd done awesome today—him more than most, obviously—and they deserved it. The latter took a little more convincing than the former, but he did it anyways. Cassandra was utterly smashed after the second round, the featherweight, but Stone had a constitution to match his namesake and didn't even look vaguely buzzed, the bastard.

"Where's your home, Jones?" Cassandra asked, slurring her words a touch and propping her chin up on one hand as she looked at him. Stone had ordered her cherry brandy, and it seemed to agree with her, because she was sitting mighty fine.

"Thought we've been over this, Red. I don't live in any one place," Ezekiel replied, deeply amused. "Rolling stone gathers no moss and all that."

She shook her head with that dogged determination that only came with being drunk. "Dinnit ask you where you lived, asked where  _home_ is. There's a difference."

He raised his eyebrows inquisitively. "That right?"

She nodded exaggeratedly once, then thought the better of it, gripping the edge of th table to keep her balance. "A-yep. Flynn lives in an apartment. The Library's his home, though. Get it?"

"Ri-ight," he drawled, then slid another glass over to her. "Finish your drink, Red. You're funnier when you're smashed."

"Okie-dokie, then."

As she began muttering about integers and purple frosting between sips, Stone gave him a cool look across the table. "'S a good question, Jones," he said. "Don't think I've ever once heard you mention home."

He was starting to feel itchy. "Ah, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you mate. Gotta maintain some air of mystery. It's a requirement for a world-class thief like myself," Ezekiel replied with a toothy grin.

Stone looked supremely unimpressed, and Ezekiel would never admit it, but being able to pull off that much 'sorry, I don't speak bullshit' in one look was a personal goal of his. "Try again, Jones. You're a Librarian now, not just a thief," he corrected dryly. "Cassie's right, too. Home ain't a house. Trust me. House I grew up in...wouldn't ever call it a home, by any stretch."

 _Safe as houses,_ Ezekiel thought in derision, then snorted and shook his head. "I'm never bringing the pair of you drinking with me again. You lot get  _way_ too touchy-feely once you get a round in."

Cowboy laughed at him. Actually  _laughed_. "You think I'm drunk, Jones? I could still recite  _Inferno_ in the original Italian verse  _backwards_ if I wanted to. Takes more than three beers, and crappy beer at that, to get me drunk. An' you ain't seen me be touchy-feely yet," he scoffed, then cast an amused glance to Cassandra, who'd zoned out of the conversation entirely and was now waving her hands in intricate patterns across the empty air in front of her as she played with whatever visions danced in her inebriated vision. "Now,  _Cassie,_ on the other hand..."

She drunkenly brought her eyes around to Stone, swaying a little on her chair. "Hm? Someone say m'name?" she asked. Before either of them could answer, someone must've fed the jukebox, because she squeaked, "I  _love_ this song!" and turned too fast in her seat, off-balancing and falling out of her chair to the floor, laughing all the while.

It was a sufficient distraction, and they mercifully abandoned the conversation in favour of getting Cassandra back to her flat before she hurt herself. The bird could  _not_ hold her alcohol.

Ezekiel didn't ask them out for a round again after that, but the question lingered in the back of his head, making him feel itchy all over the place whenever he tried to poke at it.

* * *

The answer came to him slowly, bits and pieces at a time, without him even realising it until nearly the whole damn thing was complete in the back of his head. He didn't look at it or poke at it anymore to avoid that damn itching feeling, so he didn't even notice when pieces began to fit themselves together, quietly creeping in and falling to place.

At least, he didn't until the mermaid tried to drown him.

Seriously.

Apparently, mermaids were not  _at all_ the merrymaking underwater delights that Disney made them out to be. No, actually, whilst mermaids were able to appear beautiful for a while, it was only a guise, a magical illusion meant to tempt men close, so they could drag them under and drown them. And then eat them once they'd rotted underwater long enough to be sufficiently pickled. Yecch. Mermaids were not pretty, either. They did not have fabulous red hair or wear seashell accessories. Under their glamour, they looked like the Missing Link and a piranha had a child together. He'd seen more attractive garbage tips.

These ones had been drowning people in a little costal town in England because local trawlers had practically starved them of their normal fishy diet, and getting out far enough to deal with them meant being on a boat. Ezekiel Jones did not do boats. Planes, trains, and automobiles, but not boats. He'd been bent over the railing, vomiting up everything he'd ever eaten in his life, including things he'd only imagined eating at some point, when one of those  _things_ had lunged clean up out of the water to grab him and yank him overboard.

He didn't know exactly what all happened after that, at least, not until much later when Baird told him how Stone had jumped right in to save him, the dumbass, and Cassandra had actually managed to shoot one of the mermaids with a spear gun when it tried drowning the cowboy, too. No, the next thing he remembered after his impromptu swan dive, he was lying on the deck, coughing and sputtering as he vomited up briny water. His chest hurt something fierce, and his lungs felt like they'd been scrubbed out with steel wool and sandpaper. Cassandra and Stone had bundled him into dry clothes, wrapped him in blankets, and refused to let him set foot out of the cabin until they were back on solid land and returning to the Library, where he was practically force-fed a bowl of soup—which was actually really damn good, don't tell Stone—and made to sit on the couch until the shivering stopped.

Ezekiel didn't know how he managed to fall asleep, cold and damp as he was, but he did, and when he woke up, he was horizontal on the sofa. And his head was in someone's lap. And it wasn't Cassandra, because he didn't think that Cassandra even owned a pair of jeans. Or wore those heavy, clodhopping monstrosities Stone liked to call shoes, currently propped up on the coffee table. Yeah, probably wasn't Cassandra. Peeking through his lashes, he cracked one eye open and glanced up as best he could without actually turning his head. Stone had a spiral-bound notebook propped open on the arm of the sofa, busily scratching away in it; his free hand rested on Ezekiel's back, warmth seeping into his spine from the contact. A gentle shuffle of movement from the other end of the sofa made him glance downwards, still just squinting through his lashes. Oh, there was Cassandra, sitting at the other end of the sofa, and he had his legs draped over her thighs, one of her small hands on his knee, the other holding a hardcover book open on the sofa's armrest.

Ezekiel closed his eyes for a moment, focusing very hard on keeping his breathing slow and even, totally not freaking out. Nope. Not at all. Just...screaming internally. Yep. That's all. No big deal. His not-freaking-out continued for another good ten minutes full of vicious internal debate, but his thoughts—whatever they were, he honestly couldn't tell—ground to a screeching, discordant halt when the hand resting warmly on his back moved, sliding up to his shoulder and squeezing gently before returning to its original position. "When you're up for it, Jones, you need to take a shower. You still smell like fish, man," Stone muttered quietly, and there was a quiet 'mm-hm' from the other end of the sofa, slender fingers gently patting his knee.

All his breath rushed out in one long exhale, and he tilted his head up to better look at the cowboy, given that it was so obviously pointless to keep pretending that he was asleep. Stone hadn't even paused writing in the notebook, like this was totally normal and not at all freaking him the hell out. Lucky git. He started to sit up, but sudden burning pain ripped through his arms, down his back, and Stone immediately moved his hand back up to his shoulder, forcing him back down. "I said,  _when you're up for it._ The mermaid scratched you up pretty good, so just take it easy," he muttered gruffly, shaking his head.

Ezekiel stared up at him for a moment, then slowly, stiffly laid back down, now a lot more aware of that uncomfortable pain, hot red lines that went over his biceps to his elbows where the mermaid's sharp nails had dug in, pulling him overboard. There was nowhere else to go without physically sitting up and moving, which was obviously not an option at this point, so he carefully lowered his head back down to rest on Stone's lap. He waited to be told to move, for the withdrawal, because really, Mr. Rough-and-Tumble Cowboy was okay with being a human pillow? How about  _no?_

Stone made a dissatisfied noise, and Ezekiel tensed, but then he heard paper tearing and a paper ball went flying towards the trashbin, where it bounced off the rim onto the floor. "Damn."

"I could've made  _that,_ Jake," Cassandra scoffed, and whoa, when did Stone become 'Jake'?

"The hell you could've."

"Hm. Trajectory, velocity, distance, angle of—"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, I get it," Stone grumbled under his breath, turning to a new page in his notebook, occasionally muttering to himself as he scratched away at the pages.

Cassandra patted his knee suddenly, startling him so much he jumped and immediately flinched in discomfort. "Zeke,  _relax._ I can hear you thinking too hard from down here, okay? Just go back to sleep," she insisted gently, and since when was he 'Zeke'? How much had he missed when he was asleep? He felt her move and glanced down the sofa as she twisted around to pull down the afghan draped over the sofa's back and drape it over him. "Sleep. I'm serious."

Ezekiel exhaled slowly and tried to relax. Which was stupid, because  _trying_ to relax was really a paradox, wasn't it? If you were trying to do anything, you obviously weren't relaxing. But then Stone started flexing his hand a little, fingertips digging into Ezekiel's back like a cat kneading, except it didn't hurt, and the pressure on his spine was truthfully soothing, and now Cassandra was stroking his knee, too, which was almost offensive, he was  _not_ a  _pet,_ but hell, now he was sort of sleepy.

Sneaky buggers.

* * *

That was only one little piece of the answer, though, and it was the first one he was consciously aware of. Safe as houses was a load of rubbish, and it still made him feel itchy to think of ever actually living in a house permanently. Ezekiel didn't live in any one place for too long and probably never would. No picket fence, definitely no golden retriever for him. But home wasn't necessarily a house, was it? It'd never properly occurred to him before that the two terms weren't interchangeable, that they were actually separate things, that a house could just be a place to sleep and bathe and eat, and a home could be a place where he felt peaceful and relaxed and safe.

Home wasn't a house or a flat or even a Library.

Home was patterned jumpers, piping laughter, knee-high socks, journals with strings of mind-boggling numbers, hot chocolate, the scent of flowers and honey, warm blankets, and the most ridiculous throw cushions known to mankind. Home was leather-bound books, notebooks with half the pages missing, entire paragraphs scratched out, ink stains, coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in, worn denim, paint spatters, obscure poetry references, and an absolutely horrid taste in music.

Safe as houses, his arse. But who ever said that home couldn't be a person (or two) instead of a place?

Absolutely nobody. That's who.


End file.
